Published 5:30 am, Monday, September 26, 2005

SOUTHEAST TEXAS

450,000 still without power in Texas

Thousands of workers labor in 16-hour shifts to restore service

About 480,000 customers in Southeast Texas still have no electricity today, and Entergy began rolling blackouts north of Houston because of heavy demand on its damaged system.

Of the 700,000 CenterPoint Energy customers who lost electricity, mostly in the Houston area, all but 145,000 had power restored by late afternoon, said Leticia Lowe, company spokeswoman. She said all are expected to be back on line by Friday.

Entergy, which serves the parts of East Texas that bore the brunt of the hurricane, had about 267, 661 customers without power in Texas this morning, compared with 270, 000 right after the storm hit, company spokesman Morgan Stewart said.

Early this afternoon, Entergy began interrupting service north of Houston to avoid a broader blackout that could affect the area for a longer period.

The rolling outages, which will occur in 60-minute intervals, will affect more than 142,000 homes and businesses in Montgomery, Walker, Grimes, and Liberty counties.

"Hurricane Rita has devastated our electrical system," said Joe Domino, president of Entergy Texas, whose company earlier asked customers in the affected area to voluntarily reduce their usage electricity.

"By taking this highly unusual step of interrupting power to some of our customers, we are ensuring that our grid doesn't suffer more damage from increased electrical demand due to high temperatures," he said. "We sincerely appreciate everyone's patience and understanding as we work to get their lives back to normal."

Preliminary damage assessments show 271 lines and 275 substations out of service. Also damaged are wooden and steel structures which will impact service restoration until they are repaired.

The rolling outages should not affect electricity to customers who provide public safety or public health services, the company said.

About 7,000 Entergy crew members were working to restore power, but Stewart said some were having a difficult time getting to some areas because of flooding.

Less than 40,000 of TXU Electric Delivery customers were without electricity today, said company spokesman John Hardesty. The company serves Dallas and many towns and cities in East Texas. Hardesty said at the peak of the outage about 130,000 customers were without service.

In Galveston, some resident who had just had electricity restored lost it again when an ultralight aircraft clipped a power line near Scholes Field.

The accident happened at 11:26 a.m. To repair the damage, crews later in the day had to kill power to some customers on the east end of the island for about three hours.

Aggravating the situation was the heat — which reached 99 in Houston, one degree above the record. Today's forecast calls for a high of 98 in Houston.

Meanwhile, Lowe said CenterPoint's customers in Harris, Chambers, Montgomery, Liberty and Galveston counties made up the majority of the outages. She said people in the northeast part of Harris County in heavily wooded areas were particularly hard hit by the storm.

"Fallen limbs and trees caused a lot of outages," she said.

Lowe said about 70 percent of CenterPoint's service area was hit by either hurricane or tropical storm winds.

The utility companies are giving priority to essential customers such as hospitals, water plants and police and fire stations.

Repair crews numbering about 4,000 — some from other states such as Florida, Kentucky and California — are working 16-hour shifts to repair the damage.

Lowe said things could have been worse, noting that only one of the company's 225 substations was damaged.

Hardesty said TXU customers in Dallas, Paris and Commerce should have service restored by now.

Power should be restored to Jacksonville, Palestine and Tyler by Tuesday.

He said customers in Lufkin and Nacogdoches will have power some time after Tuesday.

Telephone service has suffered only minor outages because of the storm, said SBC spokeswoman Amanda Ray.

Ray said most damage was limited to facilities along the coast and in the path of the hurricane. He said the Sabine Pass central office was lost to the storm, while 44 others are running on emergency generators or batteries.